What high-tech features should be in Civ 4?

[Optimizer]

Please check as many of them as you like...

[Solver]

A good one. It's very closely linked to where Civ 4 should stop. I believe that Civ 4 could go until maybe 2100 AD, trying to only introduce future techs concepts of which are familiar now.

I'd like to see limited space warfare... military satellites that can provide missile defense and try to knock each other down, a la SMAC.

Same way, space colonies for extra resources, but not really appearing on the map - again, probably SMAC way.

Biochemical warfare... sounds good as an idea, and will be fine if implemented correctly. Robotic units though... as long as they don't look like from a Stargate episode, I'm fine. After all, we can reasonably expect to see some unmanned combat units, probably long ranged weapons, in the next 100 years.

[lajzar]

I voted

Let's see...

AC space race - I think I proved in another thread that with current tech it would take 200000 years, and with teh wildest dreams of current space engineers (fusion rockets and 99.9999% fuel tank), it would still take 850 years to get there.

Alien life and gaia control project could make it in though.

Definitely maybe to interplanetary travel. This would require something akin to ToT layers. But those layers weren't implemented well imho. ToT layers work well as MoM earth/myrror, or as land/deepsea/leo/underground, but not for interplanetary travel. It doesnt make sense that one part of Earth would correspond exactly to another part of Mars.

Space colonies? No thanks. Too sci-fi, and the terrain around them would be boring. Similarly, space warfare should be abstracted, unless it is made part of a leo layering system.

Undersea colonies? Possibly, but as far future tech.

Maglev trains? I've already posted a detailed transport model which relegates trains to city improvements that provide airport style RTN movement. I suppose we could have a Maglev depot that does the same thing but is cheaper to use.

Biowarfare? Should be in there along with a good WMD/nonconventional warfare model.

fusion power? ok. SDI? Definitely.

genetic engineering? I favour havinga "Genetic Farm" as a tile improvement. Extra food and a bit of pollution. Plus the cure for cancer wonder, possibly organ cloning. Anything else (new organisms, clone armies) is a bit too fantastic for my tastes.

Robotic units? Sure. I'd say it should look something like an armoured spider. The shape brings out our primordial fears, it is surprisingly stable and able to survive a lost leg, and looks cool. btw, we already have the tech for robotic aircraft. Its justa step up from those radio controleld cars some of us once played with.

SMAC style planet busters? Anything that does that should be popping the mother of all volcanoes out of teh crust and send us into a new ice age through volcanic dust in the air. Assuming a realisitc world.

Nanotech? No. I have yet to see proposed applications that arent science fantasy.

SF governments? A definite YES. Civ needs more governments, both futuristic, ancient, and modern. More variety in religious govs too.

[Solver]

Yeah, interplanetary travel would need to be thought of vrey carefully in terms of implementation. With the science progress, it's clear that a chance to send humans to Moon and Mars will exist in 21st century - but implement it well.

With that there's also the possible chance of making cool things way too late in the game - like when it's obvious the game's gonna end in 10 turns anyway.

[Xorbon]

I voted to keep the space race to Alpha Centauri victory condition in the game. However, I really wouldn't mind if it was replaced with a space race to Mars (victory condition). I don't want to see cities/colonies on the moon and Mars, except in a scenario or mod.

[Optimizer]

I think that there should be some kind of space colonization between the Apollo program and the AC ship. But it has to fit the time schedule...

[lajzar]

Mars colony anyone? Or have I said that too many times already

In another thread, I showed that with any kind of radical rocket technology, you aren't getting to AC in less than 850 years. So the only way you could have a believable AC mission is if you propose some radical future propulsion system that is about 10000 times better than anything we have now. Thats 100 times better than the wildest hopes from rocket scientists for fusion rockets.

And having a futuristic tech tree to support these radical technologies will distract the designers from the real meat of the game; the historical aspects of the tech tree. I've yet to see a civ version that dealt with the modern era vaguely adequately, and even teh historical aspects could be made much broader than they have been.

[Fosse]

Biochemical, SDI, Doomsday. I voted Doomsday not to see bombs that reshape the land like SMAC's planetbusters, but to emphasize how much of a non-issue nukes in Civ have been.

SDI done as a satallite system like in SMAC would be fun and make sense. Biochemical weapons are hardly future tech. I'd like to see both come into their own in WWI and WWII era military techs.

[Trifna]

Other:

Victory condition: Mars colony (not just bringing a human there, I said a COLONY)

[Optimizer]

Well, the step to a Mars colony would feel much more realistic than the Alpha Centauri ship - it is realistic to achieve during the next fifty years, and you don't need to fill the techtree with lots of science-fiction technology.

But the Alpha Centauri ship has become sort of "canonical" in Civ games...

[Trifna]

I hate the dogmatic canons... it's good only for Easter.

[PresidentMarcos]

I want a space layer, a la CTP. This space layer would allow you to launch satellites, which would do numerous things...there would be communications satellites, which would make money and increase science (non-units, like caravans in CTP) There would be orbiting nukes (self explanatory) There would be ASATs. And there would be SDI satellites. After satellites, get into manned spacecraft, have reconassaince satellites...

Definetely orbital colonies. But these would be different. Production, commerce and food would be determined by improvements. Anyway, thanks to zero-g conditions and asteroid mining, these would receive a production bonus. Anyway, with zero-g factories, assemble troops in orbit and then return them to Earth. Quick way to build a big army.

As for missiles, have them be a bit more important...have cruise missiles, SRBMs, MRBMs, IRBMs, ICBMs, FOBS, and never forget armed space gliders! In addition to this, have victory points awarded for space firsts. And so on, and so forth.

[lajzar]

I hope they never include a space layer again.

Let's see. Satellites? These orbit the Earth a few times a day an any altitude where location above the Earth is a meaningful value, so are better as an abstraction.

Orbital Colonies? You'd either have to devise a completely new mechanic for how improvements work, or a good reason why they don't function the same way on Earth as in space.

Asteroid mining? hoho. Do you have any idea how close teh nearest mineable asteroids are? They are about twice as far as Mars. With mad DF tech, we are still looking at a few years travel time to get there.

Quick way to build armies? Um, civ isn't meant to be a wargame. And by the time you reach this stage, someone will already have convincingly won anyway.

All of these space units could better be implemented with some variant of the submarine flag. Invisible to most units, only certain units can engage them. Space marines could be done as units with a monstrously large paradrop range. As long as you're using rocket based technology, no one is ever going to carry enough fuel to conduct deep space intercept missions anyway, making space combat irrelevant.

I suspect you have underestimated just how big space really is.

[okblacke]

The light-speed travel issue is interesting, if not exactly relevant. For interested parties, I recommend Tau Zero by Poul Anderson. The ship in this book uses a Brussard Ramjet to accelerate to near light speed. 2 1/2 years to accelerate, 2 1/2 years to decelerate, from the standpoint of those in the ship. (Though closer to 20 years from the standpoint of Earth.)

Alpha Centauri could certainly be kept as a goal if efforts were made to build tech toward the solution of problems related to such a trip. If not a Brussard engine, perhaps a sail, or even an FTL drive.

Here's a fun NASA link on the topic, too:

http://www.grc.nasa.gov/WWW/PAO/html/warp/warpstat.htm

[lajzar]

Yep, for a functional bussard ramjet, we need some really powerful magnets.

To be precise, those magnets have to be powerful enough to attract molecular hydrogen up to 1000 km away while your space ship is travelling at 0.8 c.

Someone cleverer than me can do teh maths to figure out what acceleration those magnets will exert on the hydrogen, but...

1) I suspect that any magnets that powerful will do unpleasant things to the human body anywhere within the immediate vicinity of the spaceship. We contain a lot of iron, which is quite susceptible to magnetic forces.

2) Magnetism is known to be a particularly weak in terms of the 4 known forces that shape our universe. The energy to generate that kind of magnetic field must be truly staggering.

So we are still left with the issue of having to create some weird future techs to make the AC victory condition plausible. At a minimum we'd need some kind of godlike magnets tech, as well as some kind of protect human life from godlike magnets tech.

That's in addition to any environmental controls techs that would be requried for a [inhospitable world] colony. Basically, AC will need evrything Mars needs, and then some.

At a minimum, some kind of Mars colony wonder should set as a prerequisite for starting a AC victory, if we are to go for a AC victory condition at all.